While I am here in the Riviera Maya this week sweating big time I want to reflect on the cold weather days…geeze, today its 95 and feels like nearly 100% humidity! ouch!

Often, we are left kept inside with our photographic duties due to outrageous weather conditions. It could be too hot and or too cold to snag a few photographic portraits outside. The off camera flash is your best friend if you need to be inside. I recommend that you program your mind to start thinking about accenting the image with a little added flash flavor. For this post, my friends Dave & Quin at DQ Studios were shooting in Canada and it was just -4F… that is just out of control cold…. Quin rocked out this high fashion image with a few tricks up her sleeve.

Quin writes:

On a cold winter wedding (-4 degrees F!), we had just finished taking a few shots outdoors and went inside to warm up. The high-fashion image below was taken in a cramped warming vestibule (20 bonus points for anyone who doesn’t have to look “vestibule” up) .

Here’s the how and why ….

My goal was to create a high-fashion image which accentuated the curves of our bride. I also wanted to somehow convey the coolness of the winter light flooding through the window. To cool down the outdoor light, we setup our QFlash with a full CTO gel applied. I set my camera’s white balance to tungsten to blue the sunlight streaming in the window. We positioned the flash to both rim-light the bride and fill the right side of the groom’s face and I posed the bride on the ledge of the window. I set my exposure to blow out the mess outdoors and captured the image above. I love how the shadow of the necklace adds another element of interest to this high-fashion image.

Technical Data:

Camera: Canon 20D
Lens: Canon 10-22mm at 20mm
Shutter: 1/80
Aperture: f6.3
Flash: Quantum QFlash T5d with full CTO gel (triggered via Pocketwizards)

Be blessed ….
q

DQ Studios
Yin Yang Workshop

Sweetness Quin, love that shot! Total Vogue! I’m diggin the slight accent on the groom in the background…NICE usage of gels! I’ve been having fun with this CTO as well! Cheers & looking forward to seeing some more amazing stuff from your video lights

Cheers!
matt

As I study my lighting techniques, I try to understand why it is I do what I do. Sometimes, I have no idea why I do something….it just works so we shoot and move on to the next scene. As I develop this blog, I am beginning to think more about my techniques, putting a label on the ‘whys” and “hows” of our approach…

For this photographic example, I would like to direct you read Strobist | Lighting 102 “Angle / Position” so you can have a better understanding of the content written below. Then, I want you to realize that you already have been developing your off camera lighting skills since the day you opened your eyes.

If you own a speedlight, remote flash, or a little device that you can sync up to a transmitter of sorts that omits powerful bursts of light, you have the power of the sun in your pocket… (relative to the camera’s ability to record certain tonal ranges). Basically, that flash can be balanced to transmit light to work in tune with a natural light source, whether you are outside in direct sunlight hacking out your camera’s top sync speed OR if you are simply taking advantage of the available light in the space where your session is occurring.

So how do you practically apply this?

In this photo example, we had just finished up shooting the bride getting ready, I then walked downstairs and as i did, I noticed small window channeling this well defined beam of light across the wall. The light was the late afternoon sun, whose rays were less intense, giving us the ability to balance our available exposure and “paint with light” with our speedlights. I thought about placing our subject in its path of the sun’s rays but we had missed the moment because the angle of the light put the rays too high on the staircase, lessening the impact of the composition. SO, I was going to make my own sunbeam

I immediately imagined a composition with light rays coming from multiple angles. The compositional lines were going to be very strong, using the line of the stairs to intersect both beams of light. We used our personal assistant to direct the flash coming from the upper balcony in the foyer, set the flash power to 1/4 to match the quality of light coming from the sun’s rays. Then, we finished it off by adding a trusty homemade snoot. This particular snoot was on its last leg, falling apart. We ended up taking advantage of its old malleable corners, and squeezed the end of the snoot to create a thin and flat, wider beam of light. Our Canon 5d was set to ISO 160, f5.0 at 1/100th.

IMHO, this portrait has added interest because of the light we introduced, to mimic what the sun was doing above her. We shot multiple exposures, with and without the added flash. The snooted speedlight ended up adding a little flavor.

The next time you are in a room and the sun’s rays are streaking across the wall, imagine that your flash doing the same thing…

Just remember, you have the power of the sun in your pocket!

Cheers!
Matt

Up to this point, we have featured techniques and ideas on how to add a flavor to the ordinary wedding photograph. Today, we are going to leave the wedding scene and photograph a bride and groom “to be”.

This week’s post comes from a fantastic duo from Calgary Canada. My friends Dave & Quin Cheung have been delivering amazing imagery setting the bar for photographers around the world. Take a look at their approach to making connections with clients. I’m willing to bet if you took this same inspiration to every wedding / photo session, you will walk away with some imagery that will touch the SOULS of your subjects!

Dave writes:

Our goal when shooting people is always to make the images “of” them. This recent shoot was unique in that the groom-to-be is a pilot and wanted to somehow capture his passion for planes in their engagement session. We decided to try to capture some shots under the airplane landing path at our local international airport. Quin and I are always up for a challenge and what a challenge it turned out to be. A couple of issues which had to be overcome included …

(a) choosing our position and focal lengths to balance the size of our couple and airplanes overhead. Too far away from the planes shooting wide would make the airplanes look puny. Choosing a long lens to compress the couple and plane could limit our compositional choices.

(b) The speed of the incoming airplanes. After witnessing the first few planes come in, we realized it would be difficult to compose the plane in the desired position while simultaneously ensuring the couple was doing their “thang” at the exact moment the plane was above them. Shooting with SLR’s also meant we were blind as to when the planes would appear in our viewfinder, leaving only fractions of a second to frame, compose and get “the” shot.

(c) Bright noon sun. High contrast and top-down light helped our decision to add some light to the scene to balance our couple, sky and plane.

Here’s one of my favorite images from the shoot which came out exactly as I had envisioned.

And here’s how we did it:

I knew I wanted to shoot the couple kissing above me with the plane and sun overhead, so I put a 10-22mm on my 20D and moved ourselves to a spot directly under the landing path as close to the landing strip as allowed. Knowing the path of the incoming planes and location of the sun, we put the couple where we wanted then and setup a Quantum QFlash hard-left of them. To deepen the blue of the sky, a ½ CTO gel was added and the QFlash was fired at full power.

I also knew I wanted to shoot my 10-22mm lens at f18 or higher to add its characteristic star-like lens-flare only seen when stopped down. My final exposure was 1/200 and f18 which gave the balance of deep sky and balanced flash I was looking for.

After the planning, all we had to do was wait for a plane and pray. When we saw a plane approaching from afar, we all took our positions and I had Quin countdown the second to when the plane would be directly above us while I framed the shot through my viewfinder. Just before it arrived, I asked the couple to kiss and fired off several shots. With careful planning and help from the Big Guy in the Sky, I captured the image shown above.
Elements including the composition, light and “just before the kiss” moment captured in this frame makes it my favorite from the take.

Be blessed ….
d
Dave Cheung
DQ Studios . Fine Art Photography
www.dqstudios.com

WOW, Dave…i love the concept of shooting images “of” them…very inspiring! Your passion definitely shows in your work.

I am a firm believer of following photographers whose passion has put them at the top of the game. DQ studios is for SURE, at the tip top! Dave & Quin are teaching a killer workshop where they have teamed up with one of the best wedding photojournalists on the planet, Huy Nguyen, 2005 WPJA POY winner. Huy, Dave, and Quin’s workshop is dedicated to developing your artistic flavor… I personally attended one of Huy’s workshops in 2004 and it changed my world. Their Yin Yang workshop is looking pretty tasty!

Cheers!
matt

Before I get into another post, I wanted to invite everyone into the classroom for a lighting shakedown. Do you want to learn strobe lighting? Visit Strobist | Lighting 101 which I thought was GOLD until Strobist | Lighting 102 came out… 102 is just an overview at this point BUT still super valuable… David Hobby was reading my mind when he wrote this. Study up folks if you want to change up your game!

This week’s post comes from Sol Tamargo…

The bride & groom were married in a chapel.. Sounds like our everyday wedding huh? Well, this chapel is located on the BEACH in the Riviera Maya. This was a catholic wedding and a church ceremony was very important to the client. Yes, the outside beach portraits were inevitable, BUT, Sol wanted to preserve a few portrait images in the church for the family and the couple. Back lighting the veil gave the bride an angelic feel and puts a highlight on the groom that really sets him off from the background.

Sol introduced the off camera flash inside the church, operated her personal assistant. Outside, she waited for a perfect cloudy / overcast moment which helped her balance the light, and snapped this photo. Her off camera flash was set to 1/4 power, just a few feet away from the bride. Perfect accent on the veil!

In this example, Sol used the twilight hour and some creative editing to generate a photo with a false sunburst. The off camera flash was set to 1/4 power. Sol’s personal assistant helped her place the flash. She mounted the flash on a mono pod extended to its maximum reach because of the height of the bridge where the subjects were located. She used the veil to diffuse the light behind their faces. Her moody editing and toning helped finish this photo off.

*Tips* If you are shooting a groom with darker jacket, have him take it off. The white shirt’s reflective properties will make a big difference with this technique.

Thanks for the ideas Sol!

Cheers!

Matt

On the way out of the church on a cold winter day, I needed to take advantage of any indoor photo chance I could! One thing you must do is utilize your resources.

I looked up and noticed a 20 foot high balcony! This was a perfect location for a light source….(especially with the wide isles and also noticing that the church employees had just turned OFF all the inside lights)…. I had my assistant take our speedlight up to the balcony and set up the lighting for this quick and easy shot. In order to minimize spill, we added a homemade snoot to the flash and set the power setting to 1/8th power.

I decided that I wanted to underexpose the background, so we quickly set the ambient to 4 stops under and the 1/4th power setting on the flash dialed the veil in just perfectly. Sounds easy huh? It was…

This type of shot works well with a veil, but the typical veil over the bride & groom head shot can get pretty cliche. SO, you often will need to have a client who is willing to work with you and give you some energy. It helps if you have a cathedral veil too

For this shot, I felt like the anticipation of the kiss inside the veil brought this shot together, along with the nice light from above.

Cheers!
matt

ps. we actually got to thank the church lady for only allowing us to use the balcony:)